Maxine Waters’ Greatest Hits: The Business Feuds

Rep. Maxine Waters, the Californian Congressman charged today with violating ethics rules over her ties to a recipient of federal bailout funds, is known for being one of Washington’s most vigorous and colorful scolds to corporate America.

Waters is under a harsh light after OneUnited Bank, a Massachusetts bank in which her husband owned a stake, received $12 million in federal bailout money. Investigators say Waters brokered a meeting between the bank’s representatives and officials from the Treasury Department. Waters has said she did nothing wrong. She says she properly disclosed her husband’s financial links to OneUnited and that she arranged the Treasury meeting for a group that represents minority-owned banks, not just OneUnited.

Waters, of course, has been a thorn in the side of deal makers. over her 10 terms in office, a litany of business and government officials – including former Bank of America chief Kenneth Lewis and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner–have been the targets of her fiery attacks. Deal Journal compiled a list of the top four theatric moments between Rep. Waters, who sits on the financial-services committee, and corporations or government leaders in finance:

4) I guess she’s off Hank Paulson’s Christmas card list
In a hearing about TARP at the height of Congressional fury over the more than $700-billion financial bailout, Waters pounded the Treasury Secretary about her unhappiness with the government’s efforts to stem the tide of home foreclosures: “The fact that you, Mr. Paulson, took it upon yourself to absolutely ignore the authority and the direction that this Congress had given you just amazes me,” she said.

3) Beware the tentacles of giant vampire squids
In a March 2009 Congressional hearing, Waters repeatedly pressed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about how much influence Goldman Sachs Group had on financial bailouts. “Just tell me, I don’t have much time,” Waters said to Geithner after he hesitated when asked whether his chief of staff was hired from Goldman.
“You hear a lot about the dissatisfaction about the bonuses… but underneath all of this is a conversation about the linkages and the connections of the small group of Wall Street types that are making decisions,” Waters said to Geithner. “That’s what’s causing a lot of the distrust.”
(Also, at a hearing last July, a House member said Waters gave him Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article that traced the root of the financial crisis to Goldman.)

2) 435 House members x 3 = a lot of steak dinners
“We think they’ve hired three lobbyists for each one of us,” Waters said last summer about the lobbying flotillas hired by the financial-services industry to knock down an overhaul of financial regulation. “They are running up and down these halls, trying to convince people” not to vote for a new financial watchdog, she said.

1) Driving Ken Lewis to distraction.
Last year, in a hearing with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, BofA’s Lewis, Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit and a line of other bank chiefs, Waters kicked off her questioning by sarcastically calling the assembled bank honchos, “captains of the universe.”
Lewis tried a little joke that fell flat, saying he felt more like “corporal of the universe.”
When she pressed the bank chiefs about underwriting fees received in connection with government-backed bailouts, a red-faced Mr. Lewis stammered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” before Pandit stepped in with an answer that briefly mollified her.

Comments (5 of 13)

I met Ms. Waters in 1984 when I was in the universtiy and was told that she was owned by the same people that planned on helping me into politics after graduation from a UC. Her husband was a MBZ car salesman at the time and it seems they have both moved up in the world. It is a bummer to see someone sell out so hard. She was a truly principled person who is now becoming an expample of how our consumerist economic system corrupts our best and brightest. PEACE

2:23 am August 3, 2010

Aurelius wrote :

I'm confused. It looks like nearly most of the country's financial oversights and policy makers come from Goldman Sachs and Citibank including Paulson and he took calls repeatedly as he busily shunted money to Goldman sachs. Of course we're talking billions here and lets not forget Cheney and Halliburton and no-bid contracts.

I don't think congress even knows what a conflict of interest is.

11:29 pm August 2, 2010

Maggie wrote :

Maxine,Maxine....you mean all that morality you feigned,supporting women and minorities was not sincere?
You were just trying to line your pockets byo of your hubbys bank. I am so shocked. NOT!!!! Just more of the garbage that must be disposed of in Washington. AND...................one more case for term limits. The atmosphere of entitlement in our congress is pathetic,and I blame, we, the voters for keeping some of you around year after year.

9:42 pm August 2, 2010

Obummer wrote :

At some point waters was babbling on trying to get some information from Bernanke. It became clear that waters, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, had no idea what the differnece between the Fed Funds Rate and the Discount Rate is.

9:24 pm August 2, 2010

MLK admirer wrote :

We have reached the point where you can be judged on the content of your character, and how much you are able to rake in as a public servant, regardless of your skin color. Black people can now go to congress and steal as much as the white folk, and not pay their taxes as they raise yours. Isn't equality great!

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